I founded Endpoint Technologies Associates, Inc., an independent technology market intelligence company, in 2005. Previously, I was vice president of Client Computing at IDC, covering client PCs (desktop and mobile computers). Before that, I ran my own research and analysis firm, directed operations for a developer of multilingual text processing software, ran a technology analysis and publishing practice for a consulting company, managed international accounts for a data communications equipment manufacturer, and did new product development for a computerized trading network. I have published in a variety of forums and been quoted in a number of publications and other media outlets. I snagged a B.F.A. from Bennington College and an MBA from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. I am multilingual, world-traveled, and have bicycled over the Alps, but am now a family man.
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Apple Jacked Up My Podcasts. What's Next?

Podcasts are important sources of information and entertainment for me

Apple has turned my podcast library into a tangled mess and no doubt would blame me for it if I could get anyone’s attention. Instead, in silent indifference, it will simply leave me up a creek.

Something not work? You’re holding it wrong! You haven’t updated it properly! Your hardware is out of date!

It’s always my fault. But this is a new low.

I follow certain podcasts: This American Life, in which I’m admittedly quite behind; The Moth, which I consume like candy, often while stationary biking, and of which I had just the most recent three episodes; New Yorker: Fiction, which I can take only in small doses and of which I had a large number of installments; and WNYC’s Radiolab, with which I would never have caught up in any event.

Certain ones, like This American Life, are available free for the first week after they run live. Others, like The Moth, will let you freely download the most recent five episodes. To get the latest, you have to log on and update iTunes.

Okay, so I innocently go to my iMac and boot up iTunes. It looks at me funny, barfs in its shoe, and then goes through some strange recovery cycle, like a drunk who knows how to handle himself, after which it has a great grin plastered on its mug — but no podcasts. Not even a podcast directory, much less any actual podcasts.

I’m like WTF? I look around for anything familiar in this strange new universe, which seems to be an Apple update, but I cannot find a bleepin’ podcast tab. I go to the iTunes Store because at least I can get there (natch!). And there they are, all my podcasts, available in their current versions. I download This American Life and The Moth and get four: the latest three Moths and this week’s This American Life.

Now, this is where I go way more boldly than is reasonable or prudent, given iTunes’s perfidious and evil leer. I hook up my iPhone. And presto! Change-o! Everything on it is gone.

Not, oh, hey, we see you have all these podcasts here on your iPhone, but they’re not on your Mac, would you like us to copy them there for you? Not, we’re about to erase everything on your iPhone, are you sure you’d like us to do that? No polite warnings or decision points.

In a blink of an eye, I have the four new podcasts on the phone. That’s it. So, I think Time Machine! I’ve been diligent in my backups. And start to fiddle with that. I can see directories with old versions in them. I think, great, restore! Boot up iTunes. Nothing. I’m obviously not doing it right.

I go to iTunes and try importing for there. No luck.

I think, right, the Internet, and Google off on likely strings, turning up pretty quickly a clear explanation of how to restore iTunes from an old iTunes library. I go look at mine. The newest is December, almost two months old. I’m thinking, well, I can get what they’ve got. I’m up to date in The Moth; Radiolab doesn’t matter, a hundred will last me a lifetime; the New Yorker, ditto; but This American Life will leave a distinct gap. Okay, I can buy those, if need be. Let’s do it.

Lo! And behold! It works. I now have hundreds of podcasts, if not exactly the right podcasts.

I’ve heard many of the old ones. iTunes and iOS used to know when I’d listened to one on the phone and took it out of the active lineup during sync. The files were still there, but they didn’t show up in the phone’s directory. Now, they’re all hanging about, like some hired hand who likes to eat but shuns work. I’m thinking, okay, I can sort through these, kill most of them. We’re still okay.

However, after sync, many of the podcasts come up gray on the phone, a condition I’ve seen before that seems to relate to corrupt files. You can download them again, and the new ones often sync just fine. But if you can see it, and it’s grayed out, you can’t play it. We’ll put that puzzle in the unsolved category for now. I don’t have time to download all those individual podcasts again.

No doubt, I will devote a few more hours to this problem, which reminds me of the iPhoto issue I ran into a while ago. But this latest experience has set me to thinking more about Apple.

When I wrote Steve Jobs’ obituary six weeks before his actual death, I hypothesized three phases that the market would go through, an immediate downdraft in response to the loss of the great icon, a recovery based on the realization that most of Apple’s value was still there, and a later phase in which the current pipeline would run dry, and the company would become more like others, merely mortal.

I predicted a long and happy but not everlasting ride for Apple shareholders, and the whole trajectory has pretty much come to pass.

Perhaps it’s time to take that Samsung Galaxy SIII that I won out for a spin. Android has come a long way since Apple had the smartphone field to itself.

Warren Buffett famously said, “Why not invest your assets in the companies you really like?” Apple’s software has become bloated and balky, characteristics that it used to mock in Microsoft. With Microsoft trying to please its legacy customers, and Apple abandoning its own with barely a thought, bloatation had become a sore point between the two. No longer. Cupertino’s overzealous engineers are guilty of exactly the same mania that plagues Redmond.

In the new era of a mortal Apple, people like me have to live with scrambled eggs for content. A few bucks and I can mostly replace what was lost, but not the peace of mind that comes from having my stuff be where it ought to be. With its current mishmash of old episodes, grayed out pieces, and missing segments, my iTunes podcast library has been rendered completely nonsensical.

Thanks for nothing, Apple! Maybe I should convert my loyalty over to Amazon.com. At least it has This American Life.

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As much as you hate to hear it. Everything you’re describing sounds like user error. You probably have so much back data and caches from years of use and no Maintenance. Like blaming a car for breaking down when you never checked the oil. Suck it up and stop blaming apple for being misinformed.

Explanation: It’s all about the software engineers: 1) Apple must budget its efforts; money spent on apps that make Apple absolutely nothing must fall down the list. No engineer inside Apple is going to make a career out of the Podcast app. 2) If third party developers can create great cheap podcasts apps, and several do, then Apple should stay out of the way. Apple needs all the outside engineers it can attract. Solution: If Apple doesn’t work for you, try Google. Oh. Right.

Of course it jacked up your podcasts. You’re really lucky if that’s all that it did. iTunes is becoming one of the programs that I loathe to use. I had all of my music on my iPod Touch 1G. An iTunes update comes along and presto about half of my artwork images were wrong. They were images for the “new” Genius function playlists. Looking for a solution on Apple’s forums just gives lots of other posts from users with the same problem. Apple offers no support and no solution.

The problem didn’t go away with moving everything to the iPod Touch 4G. I was hoping that a new iPod and new iOS would fix it. Any wonder why I’m moving to Android at least with Android I get what I expect. Which is about what I’m getting from Apple.

This touches on a pet peeve of mine: the iOS podcasting app. The whole system worked a lot better when it was just part of iTunes. I often get podcast that don’t fully downloads, or won’t load at all. Older version was the better version.

Given the timing of this article, I wonder whether the author’s experience was in any way related to something else that happened to some iTunes users around the same date. For me and at least one other person, it seemed that Apple inexplicably marked *all* podcast episodes in the iTunes Mac app as unplayed: https://alpha.app.net/thejoshmeister/post/3128447